Reflection – Week 4

This week we spoke about web accessibility for people accessing websites with all types of disabilities for e.g. We spoke of older people and how that things that the younger generation take for granted such as motor skills (things like using the keyboard and mouse), visibility (being able to see the screen at a size and contrast) and deaf people (subtitles, captions, include background sound).

These amounts of our potential site visitors make up a considerable amount of the population which they should have access the same sites as everyone else. We were also made aware of people with cognitive difficulties such as Down Syndrome, Autism and Dyslexia so with this in mind the information on the site should be kept simple. We are cutting out a considerable amount of people if our website doesn’t adhere to these basic principles. We spoke about equal access for everyone regardless of their disability and seeing it more as la basic human right.

Things we discussed using such as:

Size and contrast

Links being underlined

Headings explained

Tackling colour issues

Easy to use type face

Unannounced movement

No Auto play

As an exercise we were given websites to look at in terms of ‘alt’ text and ‘alt’ images and links and headings to see how they functioned. TCD was very good but the Irish Times had lots of errors through the site which Cecila in class had a theory on… Nina will check the theory out to see if she is correct?? We shall wait n see!!!

Finally, we discussed how we can make our own sites accessible by using sites such as snook.ca, bobby and wave as software checkers to filter through the site to see its functionality taking into account web accessibility for all. Until this class I was totally unaware of just what size the population you could exclude if you don’t create an appropriate website for all. You could be potentially be excluding a large proportion of people to your site so when building my site I will endeavour to take these issues on board to give everyone that logs onto my site and equal and fair opportunity of accessing it.